Posts Tagged ‘curriculum’

The shifts in the BC curriculum are coming fast. Next fall the “draft” stamp comes off of all curriculum in K-9 across all subject areas. And if the current timelines remain in place, the same will happen one year later for grades 10-12. As I have written here before, the changes have been overwhelmingly well received and the conversations that have come out of them not just about what is covered in school but how it is covered have been outstanding.

As we get close to the September full implementation date, I am nervous that I see some beginning to look for solutions to cover the curriculum. And just what does that mean?

For many of us growing up, we saw the grade 8 Social Studies curriculum as the Patterns of Civilization textbook. The Science 10 curriculum was the Science Probe textbook. I talk to many parents now who believe the Math curriculum in our elementary school is really the Math Makes Sense textbook. The new curriculum does not only shift what we are teaching, and how we are teaching, but also forces us to think differently about resources. The focus on big ideas, students constructing knowledge and core competencies require different kinds of support resources. If the era of a single textbook being able to equal a course of study was not yet over, it is now.

We have our second of two days this year dedicated to the implementation of the curriculum this week. The day will focus on the competencies (communication, thinking and personal and social). It is a very rich day that schools have planned with teacher leaders at each site leading the work on their staff. Along with Aboriginal education and resources, the competencies were the number one item that staff across the district have wanted to focus on. The work in our schools has been exciting and inspiring. Teachers and administrators are working together looking at all aspects of teaching and learning and what the shifts mean for them, and their students.

As we get closer to September, there will be anxiousness around resources. We need to look to avoid the easy solutions of books or programs that promise to ‘cover’ the curriculum. There will absolutely need to be new resources over time to support the new content, competencies and inquiry-based focus of the curriculum. Aboriginal education, in particular, is an area that has not been well covered in previous resources and is embedded across all areas in the refreshed curriculum.

Just as the curriculum has been a process rather than a proclamation over the last several years, so should the work to find resources to support the students, teacher and classroom. I think we need to think carefully about format – how much digital and how much paper based? We need to think about consistency – which resources should be standard across classes and schools? We need to think of local vs. broad – which resources should be centred on the local community? We need to think of content vs. process – should the resources be big ideas / inquiry focused or focused on subject content? And what about professionally produced vs. locally teacher-curated resources? And do we always need new resources – what do we have now that still works or could be used differently to support student learning?

I see some problem-based experiences that students do to support their learning and I see some other “new”resources that look like the old resources with a fresh coat of paint and where words like inquiry and problem-based learning were sprinkled throughout but little else changed.

And all of this is just the start. The refreshed curriculum is a real chance to also think carefully and differently about the resources we use to support learning. And we know there is something reassuring when our children bring home backpacks of books – each one representing an area of study.

In our urgency to get up-to-speed with the changes in curriculum we should be thoughtfully looking for resources that help bring learning to life for our students and not ones that cover the new stuff in the older, familiar ways.

We had a theatre full of parents from our school district last week and my message to them was clear: I need your help in line at Safeway and on the sidelines of the soccer fields.

The Safeway and soccer fields message is one I have delivered before. Parents in our community have been outstanding advocates for our local public education system. We can create shiny brochures or interactive websites, but parents want the straight goods from other parents, whether they run into them at the grocery store or at their kids’ practice. I credit positive word-of-mouth for being a key reason for our increase in enrollment over the last decade. The conversations I was asking parents to assist with this time are different. I need their help with revised curriculum that is being rolled out across British Columbia – first in K-9 and then grades 10-12. As I wrote in my last post, there is tremendous positive energy among educators as they work together embracing the new curriculum, and often new approaches, to meet the needs of students.

Positive momentum among educators is great, but I was reminded by Ron Canuel, Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Education Association that this is not enough. In a presentation he gave recently, he spoke about changes that were made in Quebec with curriculum a number of years ago. In many ways the shifts resembled those we are making in B.C. He said that the community was never properly brought along on the journey, and the changes were temporary, not permanent, and a more traditional curriculum returned.

So far British Columbia seems to be making the right moves. The curriculum has been co-constructed by educators from across the province, and I have sat in many sessions with post-secondary institutions, the business community and others as the shifts in B.C. curriculum were dissected and where those in the room helped inform the discussion and the changes.

But back to Safeway and the soccer fields. The task I gave our parents is to share some key messages around the curriculum and be myth busters in the community.

Some the messages include:

we are working from a position of strength – we have one of the highest performing systems in the world

foundation skills in literacy and numeracy are still vital and they are not going away with the changes

incorporating Aboriginal perspectives, applying real-life situations to learning, focusing on big ideas and developing core competencies are not new ideas but they are better reflected now in our curriculum

as curriculum shifts, so will assessment and reporting and the K-12 system is working with the post-secondary system and others to ensure there is alignment

The session we held last week with parents was inspiring. Our Director of Instruction Lynne Tomlinson spoke about “B.C.’s Curriculum from 30,000 feet” and then 4 teams of school administrators shared different aspects of the work. While the rich discussion was an obvious highlight, I have included the presentations below – please feel free to use them and share them (if you receive this post via email you may need to open the website to see the presentations).

As computers were finding their way into every teacher’s hands, and more classes were moving to some sort of Bring-Your-Own-Device model, I was arguing the biggest shift had nothing to do with the computers. And as I look back over the shifts that computers brought, I am seeing it happen again as we embrace refreshed curriculum in British Columbia – and the biggest shifts are not about the curriculum.

When I was Principal at Riverside Secondary in Port Coquitlam just over a decade ago, our school like many others, was working to put laptops in the hands of all the teachers in the school. This shift had an amazingly powerful influence on teaching and learning. As each year more teachers took advantage of the laptops available to them, they began to thoughtfully examine their practice, carefully considering the opportunities now available that were not available without the technology. Talking about how we teach is not easy, it is very personal and our profession is often quite isolating. Talking about technology is much easier. There is no harm in admitting you don’t know how your gizmo works. And what we saw at Riverside was that as we had conversations about our gizmos we quickly moved to conversations about our practice. The technology opened the door for conversations that we often avoid.

I shared my bias in a post last fall, that when faced with six education system transformation drivers, Shifting Curriculum, Shifting Pedagogies, Shifting Learning Environments, Shifting Assessment, Shifting Governance, Shifting Citizen and Stakeholder Engagement, my bias is that the primary focus should be on pedagogies.

I saw a decade ago, that shifting technologies were opening up the driving conversation of shifting pedagogies. Fast forward a decade and now a very similar phenomena is happening with refreshed curriculum in British Columbia. The Ministry of Education in British Columbia describes the shift, “British Columbia’s curriculum is being redesigned to respond to the demanding world our students are entering. Transformation in curriculum will help teachers create learning environments that are both engaging and personalized for students. At the heart of British Columbia’s redesigned curriculum are core competencies, essential learning and literacy and numeracy foundations.”

Teachers, administrators and school districts have been allocated dedicated time to work with the new curriculum that is in draft this year for K-9 and will be fully implemented next year. The 10-12 curriculum follows one year later. And it has been so interesting to listen to feedback as teachers work together on the curriculum. As I visited those working on the curriculum and debriefed with others afterwards, nobody was talking about the content. People made comments like, “I didn’t realize how much similarity there is between our elective areas”, “We made plans to do some joint units next year” and “It is great we all now have the same understanding of core competencies.” The curriculum has given people a reason, an opportunity and a purpose for looking at their practice. Again like with the computer, the power is not in the curriculum, but in the conversations and shifts in what we do in the classroom.

There are some amazing new connections being built through the curriculum implementation process. I talked to people who have worked in the same school with colleagues for years, but now feel they have a reason to work together. The power of the curriculum is not in what is written and posted on the website. The power is in how it comes to life in classrooms.

Clearly you can’t change one part of the education system in isolation. This is one of the great challenges we face in British Columbia – we have new curriculum, but does the assessment still match? We have been given greater permission from the provincial government to think differently, but have we fully engaged our community in what the “different” would look like?

While it is true one cannot do everything at once, we all need entry points for transformation. First with school and district leaders in our district, and then with Superintendents from across Canada I have recently worked through trying to rank and prioritize these six system drivers: Shifting Curriculum, Shifting Pedagogies, Shifting Learning Environments, Shifting Assessment, Shifting Governance, Shifting Citizen and Stakeholder Engagement. (click on the graphic below to enlarge)

I realize it is a bit of a false discussion – you can’t do any of these separate from each other. In part from being influenced by my local and national colleagues, if we started with one – I would start with pedagogies.

At its core, learning is about the relationship between the teacher and students. We can have the best curriculum, policies or assessment, but first we need the practices. As our pedagogies change, our assessment will follow. And new pedagogies and new assessment will beg for new curriculum and these changes force both shifts in policy and engagement. And finally our learning environments should reflect our practice so as the practices change the learning environments will follow.

What do you think – if you could start with only one – which one would you select?

Our group of Superintendents from across the country is committed to our own learning starting with shifting pedagogies – it will be interesting to see what we can learn from each others successes and challenges from across the country.